The Gothic
Year of lecture: Unknown
Abstract:
"In our early tutorials some of us have discussed the value, if any, of studying the history of art and I have suggested to you that the reason why we study history is really quiet simple. Knowledge inhabits the past and only the past. There is no acceptable way of having knowledge of the future, though it’s how we may anticipate future events by guessing from past experience. But only prophets and Soothsayers profess to foretell the future accurately, and they haven’t yet succeeded in producing reliable results. When they do we shall have no doubt Chairs in Soothsaying. But the soothsayers who possess an insight into the future are not half as dangerous as the soothsayers and mythologies who believe they possess an insight into the past. Because human life is such that we must have some account of the past in order to face the present. So there will always be people who will want to tell you what happened. In other words, if you don’t get good history you will get bad history: myth, misconceptions, and deceit. History is no divining rod; it has no superior way of knowing the past; but it is at least a self-correcting discipline, surviving, like science, by the correction of its mistakes. And it makes progress. Anyone who would claim that we know less of the past today than we did five, twenty-five, a hundred years ago, is not so much a sceptic as a fool.
"These preliminary remarks are appropriate to our approach to the study of gothic art because it s one of the great subjects of art history, about which there still rages controversy, and much remains to be settled. But at least we know far more about it now than when men first began to study gothic architecture."
